Hello anonymous person, On 10/12/2025 17:15, donotemailme@xganon.com wrote:
Can someone explain why uefi boot is not a valid option when telling it to build an hdd image?
Because the focus for the live images have been on ISO files and generating other formats such as hdd images or tarballs has no test coverage.
There are attempts to support UEFI for hdd images, but that needs a suitable test coverage before it can be accepted. See https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/merge_requests/429
I would also note the following The documentation suggests to cp iso to /dev/sdX Then add a partition to /dev/sdX for persistent storage.
The test coverage for the persistent feature is rather minimal.
This does not work. If you cp or dd the iso to the block device the block device is identified as an ISO and you can not add a partition to it. If you partition the block device first then cp or dd the iso to the / dev/sdX1 it sometimes works and boot and other times it fails to find the uefi partition. Not exactly surprising as writing partitions to a partition is a very edge case thing.
There are plans to create installation tests (meaning the installation of the ISO file onto a USB stick, not the installers from the live system). They will use other (well known) tools such as dd, Rufus, Ventoy and BalenaEther to create USB media.
That will take some development time. Do you volunteer?
I tried a lot of things to produce a usb disk where the iso and the persistent storage were both on the same device and ended up adjusting my script to partitioning out a loop device then using the files in <live-build>/binary to build out a properly laid out img file that can be written to a usb stick and boot legacy/bios or uefi. This is all done outside of live-build.
If your computer does not require legacy/bios boot, but is able to boot with UEFI, it is sufficient to copy all files from the ISO image onto your USB stick.
Additionally, the mailing list archive shows that several other people attempted this and succeeded.
Is live-build still being actively maintained?
I'm sorry, but I feel offended... Take a look at the mailing list archive and the git history.
Is there a place I should report problems?
You are already in the right place. This mailing list and the Debian bug tracker are the primary sources regarding live-build.
Apart from reporting problems, it is highly appreciate to also report solutions.
With kind regards, Roland Clobus
Attachment:
OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature